Detained Aussie's mother wants Carr to help

The mother of an Australian aid worker embroiled in a legal wrangle in Libya is calling on the Foreign Minister to personally intervene in the case.

Alexandra Bean, who works for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), was questioned at length by authorities in Tripoli about allegations she was sexually assaulted by a senior Libyan official.

Ms Bean's family say she denies the assault ever took place, but after she refused to sign a witness statement which was written in Arabic, she had her passport confiscated.

The 31-year-old is now being held at an IOM guesthouse and has been in contact with an Australian consular official in Cairo.

But her mother Kate wants Foreign Minister Bob Carr to give her daughter the same treatment as he did to Australian lawyer Melinda Taylor earlier in the year, when he flew to Libya to make representations on her behalf when she was detained.

"I'm very concerned. It appears to me that she's in a country where she's extremely vulnerable, both as a woman and as a Western woman," she said.

"She appears to have limited support from IOM and at this stage, no consular assistance on the ground."

Ms Bean says she understands DFAT is now trying to organise a visa for a consular official to travel to Tripoli on Friday.

"I think she needs consular assistance on the ground where the Australian Government can negotiate with their Libyan counterparts as to what sort of document will satisfy the Supreme Security Council and then enable her to be allowed to leave Libya with a consular assistance accompanying her," she said.

False allegations

Ms Bean says her daughter had notified DFAT about the sexual assault allegations she was being asked to respond to.

She says her daughter says she was never sexually assaulted.

"She sent us all an email notifying us that she'd received written notification from the Lybian Supreme Security Council that her presence was required at their unit for questioning," she said.

"She also then provided a briefing to everybody including DFAT that earlier this week she'd received a text from the deputy minister, asking her to meet up with him, which she didn't reply to.

"She received a further text where he stated that he'd been accused of raping her. This is certainly not the case.

"She's got absolutely no idea where this came from. She did the absolute correct thing."

Kate Bean says she feels helpless.

"What I'm hoping is that the Libyan government will actually see that this is a young woman with a family who love her very much, and that they just need to let her go and give her the right to leave Libya," she said.

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